Google Glass Won’t Have Facial Recognition Apps Yet

by Eric Larson (courtesy mashable)

Google announced in a blog post Friday night that it will not be allowing any facial recognition apps in Google Glass until “proper protections” are set in place.

Questions about whether or not the technology should be included in Glass have been circulating since the device hit the market. Google implies in the post it’s not completely out of the question for the future, but says there are still strong privacy protections to be implemented before any decisions can be made.

From the blog:

“When we started the Explorer Program nearly a year ago our goal was simple: we wanted to make people active participants in shaping the future of this technology ahead of a broader consumer launch. We’ve been listening closely to you, and many have expressed both interest and concern around the possibilities of facial recognition in Glass. As Google has said for several years, we won’t add facial recognition features to our products without having strong privacy protections in place. With that in mind, we won’t be approving any facial recognition Glassware at this time.”

We told you a few weeks ago about a proposed demo app, called MedRef, that would allow hospital employees to pull up their patients’ information on Glass via facial recognition technology.

Read Google’s full blog post here. Do you think it’s a good idea to hold off on introducing this feature to Glass?